Various methods have been proposed in the literature to predict the rainfall conditions that are likely to trigger landslides in a given area. Most of these methods, however, only consider the ...rainfall events that resulted in landslides and provide deterministic thresholds with a single possible output (landslide or no‐landslide) for a given input (rainfall conditions). Such a deterministic view is not always suited to landslides. Slope stability, in fact, is not ruled by rainfall alone and failure conditions are commonly achieved with a combination of numerous relevant factors. When different outputs (landslide or no‐landslide) can be obtained for the same input a probabilistic approach is preferable. In this work we propose a new method for evaluating rainfall thresholds based on Bayesian probability. The method is simple, statistically rigorous, and returns a value of landslide probability (from 0 to 1) for each combination of the selected rainfall variables. The proposed approach was applied to the Emilia‐Romagna Region of Italy taking advantage of the historical landslide archive, which includes more than 4000 events for which the date of occurrence is known with daily accuracy. The results show that landsliding in the study area is strongly related to rainfall event parameters (duration, intensity, total rainfall) while antecedent rainfall seems to be less important. The distribution of landslide probability in the rainfall duration‐intensity shows an abrupt increase at certain duration‐intensity values which indicates a radical change of state of the system and suggests the existence of a real physical threshold.
Key Points
A probabilistic approach is needed to evaluate landslide rainfall thresholds
Bayes theorem is suited to this purpose
Landslide probability is strongly related to the event rainfall
The diversity of
Botryosphaeriaceae
species associated with “Botryosphaeria dieback” of grapevine was investigated in 18 vineyards in Sardinia, Italy.
Lasiodiplodia
isolates obtained from different ...woody hosts including holm oak, sweet orange and broom bush in Italy, Algeria and Tunisia were also characterized. Morphological and cultural characteristics as well as ITS and EF1-α sequence data were used to identify the fungal isolates. Forty-eight botryosphaeriaceous isolates were obtained from 113 symptomatic grapevine samples, from which ten species were identified.
Diplodia seriata
was the dominant species (25 % of isolates), followed by
Neofusicoccum parvum
(21.7 %). Two species,
Diplodia olivarum
and
D. africana
are reported for the first time on grapevine. In addition, two new species namely
Lasiodiplodia mediterranea
sp. nov. from grapevine, holm oak and sweet orange and
Lasiodiplodia exigua
sp. nov. from broom bush are described. In artificial inoculation experiments conducted on excised green grapevine shoots and lignified canes as well as holm oak seedlings,
L. mediterranea
was shown to be an aggressive pathogen.
Senescence, the irreversible cell cycle arrest of damaged cells, is accompanied by a deleterious pro-inflammatory senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP). Senescence and the SASP are major ...factors in aging, cancer, and degenerative diseases, and interfere with the expansion of adult cells in vitro, yet little is known about how to counteract their induction and deleterious effects. Paracrine signals are increasingly recognized as important senescence triggers and understanding their regulation and mode of action may provide novel opportunities to reduce senescence-induced inflammation and improve cell-based therapies. Here, we show that the signalling protein WNT3A counteracts the induction of paracrine senescence in cultured human adult mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). We find that entry into senescence in a small subpopulation of MSCs triggers a secretome that causes a feed-forward signalling cascade that with increasing speed induces healthy cells into senescence. WNT signals interrupt this cascade by repressing cytokines that mediate this induction of senescence. Inhibition of those mediators by interference with NF-κB or interleukin 6 signalling reduced paracrine senescence in absence of WNT3A and promoted the expansion of MSCs. Our work reveals how WNT signals can antagonize senescence and has relevance not only for expansion of adult cells but can also provide new insights into senescence-associated inflammatory and degenerative diseases.
Does the expansion of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) to a broader range of ancestries improve the ability to identify and generalise variants associated with age at menarche (AAM) in European ...populations to a wider range of world populations?
By including women with diverse and predominantly non-European ancestry in a large-scale meta-analysis of AAM with half of the women being of African ancestry, we identified a new locus associated with AAM in African-ancestry participants, and generalised loci from GWAS of European ancestry individuals.
AAM is a highly polygenic puberty trait associated with various diseases later in life. Both AAM and diseases associated with puberty timing vary by race or ethnicity. The majority of GWAS of AAM have been performed in European ancestry women.
We analysed a total of 38 546 women who did not have predominantly European ancestry backgrounds: 25 149 women from seven studies from the ReproGen Consortium and 13 397 women from the UK Biobank. In addition, we used an independent sample of 5148 African-ancestry women from the Southern Community Cohort Study (SCCS) for replication.
Each AAM GWAS was performed by study and ancestry or ethnic group using linear regression models adjusted for birth year and study-specific covariates. ReproGen and UK Biobank results were meta-analysed using an inverse variance-weighted average method. A trans-ethnic meta-analysis was also carried out to assess heterogeneity due to different ancestry.
We observed consistent direction and effect sizes between our meta-analysis and the largest GWAS conducted in European or Asian ancestry women. We validated four AAM loci (1p31, 6q16, 6q22 and 9q31) with common genetic variants at P < 5 × 10-7. We detected one new association (10p15) at P < 5 × 10-8 with a low-frequency genetic variant lying in AKR1C4, which was replicated in an independent sample. This gene belongs to a family of enzymes that regulate the metabolism of steroid hormones and have been implicated in the pathophysiology of uterine diseases. The genetic variant in the new locus is more frequent in African-ancestry participants, and has a very low frequency in Asian or European-ancestry individuals.
N/A.
Extreme AAM (<9 years or >18 years) were excluded from analysis. Women may not fully recall their AAM as most of the studies were conducted many years later. Further studies in women with diverse and predominantly non-European ancestry are needed to confirm and extend these findings, but the availability of such replication samples is limited.
Expanding association studies to a broader range of ancestries or ethnicities may improve the identification of new genetic variants associated with complex diseases or traits and the generalisation of variants from European-ancestry studies to a wider range of world populations.
Funding was provided by CHARGE Consortium grant R01HL105756-07: Gene Discovery For CVD and Aging Phenotypes and by the NIH grant U24AG051129 awarded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA). The authors have no conflict of interest to declare.
Abstract This paper illustrates the process of design under uncertainty on a practical case study of an offshore wind farm. We document the entire process through selection and quantification of ...relevant uncertainties, definition of probabilistic limit states, reliability computation algorithms, as well as illustrating the impacts of the analysis through a design utilization study. The brief introduction in this study draws information and summarizes outcomes from the extensive works that took part within the EU H2020 HIPERWIND project. The results from the study show that significant material savings can be achieved by introducing probabilistic design methodologies, and particularly with the help of an integrated modelling approach where the entire structure (turbine, tower & foundation) is considered as a whole.
Aims
To develop a protocol for environmental sampling to detect parvoviruses of dogs and cats in the environment.
Methods and Results
Environmental contamination was carried out using different ...dilutions of parvovirus‐contaminated materials; further field samplings were performed in areas in which clinical cases of parvovirus infections were present. Sterile cotton swabs and sponges for microbial surface sampling were used. Viruses were detected in these samples with different methods: conventional PCR, nested PCR and real‐time PCR, detecting viral DNA; virus isolation, detecting infectious virus; and a commercial rapid enzyme immunoassay, detecting viral antigen. No substantial differences were observed in the two sampling methods, although the sponge was more convenient for sampling rough surfaces. Molecular assays were the most sensitive methods, identifying even very low amounts of viral DNA (up to 10 copies of viral DNA/10 µl of sample). Virus isolation and the rapid test detected the viruses only at the highest viral concentrations, both in the experimental setting and field conditions.
Conclusions
Environmental sampling and molecular protocols were effective in detecting environmental contamination with parvoviruses.
Significance and Impact of the Study
The protocol will be useful to identify possible sources of infection and to assess the efficacy of disinfection protocols in the environment.
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